iTunes fall down, go boom

Actually the sound was probably less of a boom and more like a million voices crying out for tech support in that short Christmas-morning lull between the time the kids finish unwrapping their gifts and the time that hungry adults finally get dinner on the table. The problem? Demand for Apple’s online iTunes music store was so great that Apple’s servers couldn’t keep up with the load. According to the Associated Press:

Swarms of online shoppers armed with new iPods and iTunes gift cards apparently overwhelmed Apple’s iTunes music store over the holiday, prompting error messages and slowdowns of 20 minutes or more for downloads of a single song.

Frazzled users began posting urgent help messages Monday and Tuesday on Apple’s technical forum for iTunes, complaining they were either not allowed into the store or were told the system couldn’t process their request to download songs and videos.

A similar scene played out here at Pine Gulch. For weeks I had been telling anyone who asked that iTunes gift cards would make the ideal gift for my eldest daughter. She received a red iPod nano in October (an early delivery by Santa) but was desperately short of money to buy music with. She put off new purchases in favor of ripping her CD collection, but by the time the Christmas morning unwrapping frenzy was over, she had collected no less than four iTunes gift cards totalling over $50.

Her first problem was remembering her password. She got that reset easily enough, but when she tried to redeem her gift cards the site woudn’t respond. We thought at first that the problem was due to flakiness with my network, but my browsing at other sites that morning went without a hitch. I never actually saw the iTunes problem first-hand because I spent most of Christmas day chasing our shelties around the house with my new Airzooka. By the day after Christmas, my daughter happily reported that everything had straightened itself out and that she had been able to purchase and download several albums.

So what’s the proper interpretation of Monday’s meltdown? The AP quotes analysts offering this kind of spin:

“What you’re seeing is the tremendous success of the iPod,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director with JupiterResearch. “No doubt it was a very, very popular gift, and no matter how well you plan on the server side of the equation, there are always times when you get caught short.”

How could Apple get caught short… didn’t they know how many gift cards they were selling? Or they didn’t know how many of those gift cards would be redeemed Christmas morning? Obviously they should have known the answer to the first question. And if they didn’t know the answer to the second, then the data they collect this week will enable them to calibrate their expectations for next year.

How about it, TechBloggers? Any iTunes problem to report this week? Either way, let us hear from you in the comments.

BTW my friend sells Avon and she let me buy an Orbit Sound System (less than $39) for my Nano and it’s a cool portable audio device if I ever saw one. It’s doing exactly what I wanted it to do too, how often can you say THAT about stuff you buy?

I guess the people running to log on to the iTunes store on Christmas must have thought they were the only ones, buying into the bogus-but-widespread media story from earlier this month that sales weren’t keeping pace with the iPods. Even Dwight helped spread the word, though he does deserve some credit for following up with Apple’s less-publicized response to the claims.

I bought my wife a video ipod for Christmas and set it up on Christmas morning. I had already created the iTunes accoun ahead of time, so that wasn’t a problem, but when I tried to buy a couple of tv shows, it was very slow to respond. After about 5-10 minutes, it finally did respond but then the download took forever. I’m not sure how long because I got up from the computer and came back about an hour later and it was finished. Apple should have been prepared for this spike in business, and I’m betting they will be next year.

IMHO, the above is all just conjecture – it was due mostly to optical line failures in Taiwan (a major WWW hub). To keep bandwidth up for needed services, they gutted the bandwidth for music stores, etc. Servers and routes were switched. Ask the folks who run them! BTW the quake occurred at 8:26 PM PST time on 12-25-2006. Slowdowns are anticipated on Christmas – everyone is updating games and downloading….but the extended slowdowns were due to the quake. Remapping routes on servers does not take days, getting bandwidth from new sources does. Not one of the U.S. mainstream news organizations put their number one and two tech stories together on this. Doh’t! I usually stray from them but saw the headlines and knew they must be on crack to have missed this little point.

My only complaint is that the Ipod comes with no software. Our internet has been down at my house for some time. My sister got a New Ipod for Christmas and the version of Itunes she had on her computer was not the newest version. It would not work with her new Nano. I pulled up the Ipod through My Computer and checked the folders there and there was no Itunes file to install as an update. I had to run to work and download the file really quick to get it to work. You would think Apple would include Itunes on the Ipod with instructions on how to delete the file once you are done with it.

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